


your voice, a siren

by antijosh



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Exes, M/M, Post-Break Up, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-11 13:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13524903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antijosh/pseuds/antijosh
Summary: Valentine's Day is hard enough already now that Jihoon's single, but it gets ten thousand times harder when Woojin shows up.





	your voice, a siren

**Author's Note:**

> so uh. this turned out to be a little more personal than i would have liked and as such i'm a bit unsure of it, but i do hope that you enjoy it anyway. 
> 
> special thanks to jackie and yana, for both encouraging me to finish this and reassuring me that it does not, in fact, suck. i say this every fic, but i seriously don't know what i'd do without you guys <3
> 
> title (and quite honestly the whole fic) inspired by [i need somebody by day6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47T-Sb5P1qU)
> 
> lastly, happy valentine's day! i hope everyone gets to spend some time with their loved ones today~

The sound of rain hitting Jihoon’s windows drowns out the low drone of his TV, a mindless talk show on in the background as he tries to keep his thoughts from drifting. Being surrounded by people in love on a day dedicated to celebrating love while he’s still lonely and sort of heartbroken thoroughly exhausted Jihoon, and now all he wants to do is sleep (even though it’s barely past 7 p.m.). The grumble of his stomach keeps him from wandering to his bedroom though, and just as he heads for the kitchen to start cooking, the door buzzes. 

Jihoon scowls—Donghan's been checking on him all day, nearly hourly, and in all likelihood it’s Donghan again, probably here with food or a movie for them to watch together. Jihoon wrenches the door open, prepared to yell at Donghan to go spend Valentine’s Day with his _actual model_ of a boyfriend, but his mouth snaps shut as soon as it opens.

“Why the hell are we not together anymore?”

Woojin’s hair is stuck to his forehead with the cool February rain, denim jacket stained dark with water. It’s been six months but the sight of Woojin’s face still makes Jihoon’s heart drop down to his stomach. He takes a deep breath, in through the nose (just enough to catch a bit of Woojin’s cologne), and then: “Do you want to come inside?”

+

“Here,” Jihoon says, offering Woojin a dry sweatshirt as he shivers on Jihoon’s couch. It’s the only item of black clothing he owns—it was actually Woojin’s, until Jihoon borrowed it and never gave it back. It’s just one of many items that got lost in their breakup and has been sitting on the floor of Jihoon’s closet for months, along with a few old mixtapes, framed pictures Jihoon couldn’t bring himself to get rid of, and their matching neck pillows that both somehow always ended up at Jihoon’s apartment. 

“Thanks.” Woojin shrugs off his jacket, and Jihoon is just a second too late in averting his eyes when Woojin peels off his soaked tee shirt. 

“You’re safe,” Woojin says, only a few moments later. His voice is low, rough like Jihoon knows it gets when Woojin’s upset. Jihoon opens his eyes, and the sight of Woojin hunched over on his couch, wearing that hoodie with his elbows resting on his knees and hands linked uneasily almost breaks Jihoon’s heart all over again. 

“Why are you here, Woojin?” It comes out harsher than Jihoon means it too, but he can’t make himself feel guilty about it. Six months of radio silence, and now Woojin just shows up at his door. 

“Yerim’s getting married.” Woojin lifts his head, eyes meeting Jihoon’s for the first time since he set foot in the apartment. 

“Your sister Yerim? Isn’t she only eighteen?” Jihoon really shouldn’t be distracted by this, but he still loves Yerim—he always did (just like her brother, he thinks).

“Twenty now, actually. My parents are still less than thrilled,” Woojin replies, lips pressing into a thin line. 

Jihoon nods thoughtfully, grabbing at the sleeves of his own sweater for comfort. Then, “but why are you _here_?”

Woojin clears his throat like he’s going to say something, but the words get lost somewhere along the way. It’s all too familiar to Jihoon—even during their worst fights Woojin could keep going forever, but try to have an actual conversation about emotions and he shuts down, struggling to find the right words to express himself. Jihoon used to be understanding, and old habits die hard.

“Need a minute?” he asks, and Woojin looks up at him, eyes wide.

“Yes please.”

“You feel like eating? I was about to make dinner before you got here.” It’s a pointless question—they both know they always feel like eating. Woojin follows Jihoon wordlessly into the kitchen, and it feels like a peace offering.

+

Soft pop music fills the kitchen, because Jihoon can’t cook in silence and Woojin still doesn’t want to talk. Also, Jihoon doesn’t really want to have an emotionally charged conversation with his ex boyfriend while said ex boyfriend has a very sharp knife in his hands. Jihoon had relegated Woojin to chopping duty, more out of routine than anything else, and the way they move around Jihoon’s kitchen with practiced ease makes Jihoon’s chest ache. It’s a different place, a different time, but they’re still JihoonandWoojin, WoojinandJihoon who know their way around each other better than anything else. 

They’re making kimchi fried rice—they’ve made it together a thousand times and Jihoon doesn’t have enough food in his fridge to make much else. It hurts Jihoon that Woojin remembers exactly how big Jihoon likes the kimchi pieces to be (big enough for a mouthful, small enough to grab easily with chopsticks), and how his hand looks wrapped around the wooden spatula that Jihoon had barely remembered to take the night he moved all his stuff out of Woojin’s apartment.

Jihoon doesn’t mind meals without conversation—the two of them were always too busy eating to talk, even at the happiest point of their relationship. This, however, is more awkward than he’d like. Woojin eats slowly, like he’s afraid of having no food left. Jihoon used to tease him about it, but now he just stares down at his own bowl, too afraid of making accidental eye contact to look up. The whole situation is much too domestic for his comfort; Jihoon’s scared by how much he missed having Woojin in his space. 

“I’ll clean up.” It’s the first words that have been spoken in the past forty five minutes, and Jihoon’s head jerks up in surprise. Woojin’s already moving, hand reaching across the table to take Jihoon’s empty bowl and chopsticks. Jihoon can’t take his hands off the table fast enough, and Woojin notices.

“You don’t have to be afraid to touch me, you know. Or look at me. You’ve been avoiding looking at me all night.” 

To call their time together _all night_ is a bit of a stretch, but Jihoon doesn’t say that. Something about the softness of Woojin’s voice, the way he just moves to the sink after he says it, like he doesn’t expect anything from Jihoon—that stops Jihoon from saying anything smart.

“I’m sorry,” he says, gaze trained on Woojin’s back and the muscles moving beneath his sweatshirt, and Jihoon means a lot more by the words than just apologizing for the lack of eye contact. “I don’t—“ he starts, but the words get stuck. He tries again. “I don’t know how to act around you anymore.”

“I don’t blame you.” Woojin turns, leaning back against Jihoon’s sink, hands braced on the counter behind him. It’s a vulnerable position, and Jihoon’s almost surprised by it. “I think I can tell you why I’m here now. I think—I think I needed to figure it out for myself first.”

Jihoon doesn’t say anything, just nods as he leans back a little more in his chair, bracing himself.

“So.” Woojin clears his throat. “Yerim’s getting married,” he repeats. “My little sister is getting married, and when she told me the first thing I thought of was that she wasn’t supposed to get married first, I was. _We_ were.”

Woojin’s words hit Jihoon like a slap to the face. He remembers trips to the beach in Busan, near where Woojin grew up, and thinking that would be a perfect place to propose. He remembers walking past ring shops, thinking about how pretty a plain gold band would look around Woojin’s tan fingers. He remembers aunties asking him when he’s “finally going to settle down with that nice boy, the dance teacher?” He remembers, and it _hurts_.

He’s not proud of it, but Jihoon follows his instinct. He doesn’t want to hurt anymore. “That didn’t happen because you _left_ ,” he forces out through gritted teeth, hoping it’ll steer Woojin off topics that bring up old pain (though at this point, what else is there to talk about).

Woojin hasn’t changed much—that pushes his buttons, just like Jihoon expected it would. “I left because you were too prideful to ask me to stay,” he snaps, and Jihoon barely manages to hide his flinch. Woojin’s not wrong; that’s the worst part. Jihoon’s had his fair share of exes, and they’ve all told him hurtful things, stretching the truth to fit their narrative in which everything is Jihoon’s fault (he’s not saying he’s blameless, but relationships are rarely ruined by one person alone). This, however, is no stretch. But defense is ingrained into Jihoon’s very core—it’s all he knows how to do. 

“I never asked you to leave either. Who would I be if I begged you to stay, if you didn’t want to?”

"Someone who cared," Woojin answers easily. "I just needed to know that you wanted me there, Jihoon."

"If you left for a reason then why are you back? Why are you making this harder than it already was?" There’s too many _whys_ being said tonight, too many requests for answers that don’t exist. 

“Because I refuse to believe that you don’t care.” The set of Woojin’s jaw is one Jihoon knows, has seen a million times. It’s the one he wears when he’s sure of himself, or when he’s posturing to get someone to stop making eyes at Jihoon across a coffee shop (that was a common occurence, back then). “I think you still love me and you’re just too proud to admit it. And that’s a problem because I’m still in love with you and it’s _stupid_ for us to pretend that it’s not true.”

Woojin is a bull when he wants to be and Jihoon knows that there’s no avoiding this conversation now, so he reciprocates. “Yeah, I love you, so what? You left. It’s done. You can’t expect us to pick right back up where we left off after six months of silence, Woojin.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Woojin says quickly. “I don’t expect everything to go back to how it was Jihoon, I’m not a child.” Jihoon winces.

“So what are you asking then?” he challenges, chin up. 

“A do-over,” Woojin blurts. “I want a do-over.” He looks like he wants to say more but he doesn’t, lips pressed into a thin line to keep the words from overflowing, waiting for Jihoon’s reaction.

Warmth stirs in Jihoon's chest. He doesn't know what it is—nostalgia, regret, love—but it's an uncomfortable feeling, like there's too much of it for his chest to contain. He focuses his eyes on the blank wall, his ears on the sound of rain still hitting his windows. Woojin is really shockingly quiet, nearly still except for where he's tugging at his own fingers, twisting them together and untwisting again, over and over. Jihoon can't watch it—it reminds him too much of the way things used to be, of arguments ending in silence and going to bed with things left unsaid, unhappiness left unresolved. Some things never change and it's too much to hope that enough _could_ change. But he hopes anyway. He can’t help it. 

“A do-over,” he repeats slowly, finally bringing his eyes to meet Woojin’s again. Woojin nods, eyes wide with a fierce determination.

“Before you say it—I know it’s unrealistic. I know we can’t forget everything. But I can’t not have you in my life, Jihoon. You’re too important to me. So I want a do-over. As friends, or dating, or whatever you want, I just can’t keep pretending you don’t exist, like we don’t mean something to each other.” 

Jihoon wishes he could think about it for longer, but he can’t. Even as the words leave Woojin’s mouth, he wants to agree, because the truth is that Woojin leaving had made a hole somewhere in Jihoon’s chest that he’s spent the past six months trying to fill with music and forced laughter, bad romantic comedies and the video games that Woojin never liked to play anyways. More than anything, Jihoon wants his best friend back—the person who could finish his sentences, who knew when he wanted to get out of a conversation before Jihoon even recognized it himself. Before he’d loved Woojin as a boyfriend, he’d loved him as a friend, and Jihoon thinks that made the loss a hundred times harder. 

“A do-over,” he repeats again, this time nodding. “As friends. I want us to be friends again. Before anything else, I want to be your friend again.”

Woojin’s expression softens—he wasn’t expecting that. “Okay,” he says softly, unsure. Then louder, firmer, stronger, back straightening: “Okay.”

Jihoon stands easily, pushing up from the table and raising his head high, chin up to meet Woojin’s wide eyes as he extends a hand. 

“Hi.” His voice is steady, sure. “I’m Jihoon. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Woojin.” Woojin’s grasp is firm, and when he smiles his snaggletooth peeks out. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

The skin of the human body replaces itself every 27 days. This Jihoon’s palm has never touched this Woojin’s hand, but the warmth, the weight, and the rough calluses are all too familiar. It’s been six months since Jihoon’s felt Woojin’s hand in his, and it feels like nothing’s changed at all, even though it has. But now, Jihoon thinks, maybe it’s changed for the better. 

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/pwjno)


End file.
